Page 5 of Lion's Share
Or just good genes.
“Told you it might be harder than you thought to get someone to come out here.”
“The day is young,” he replied, and her smile broadened into a grin.
“True.”
They walked in silence for a few more minutes. He liked that about her, liked that she didn’t see the constant need to chatter. Yes, when they got going, they could talk for hours, but they were also both fine with being quiet when the situation called for it.
By that point, they were getting close to the glade where they’d seen the portal for the first time. There wasn’t anything in particular to distinguish it from other clearings in the forest except possibly its size, but they both knew it very well because their hikes frequently brought them back here.
Then Sidney paused by a tall sequoia and laid her hand on the rough bark.
“There’s a symbol here.”
At once, Ben moved closer to the tree in question, so close that his bare arm brushed against hers as he approached. Even that faint touch was enough to send a thrill through him, although he told himself this was not the time to get distracted.
Just as she’d said, an Ogham letter had been scratched into the tree’s trunk. By this point, he was familiar enough with the letters to know this was the one for “pine tree.”
Maybe whoever had carved it couldn’t tell the difference between a pine and a sequoia.
This one was even newer and fresher than the letters they’d seen in the oak grove a month earlier. In fact, Ben could see sticky sap and tar oozing up around the wound in the tree’s bark, which seemed to be a sign that it had been carved there very recently, maybe even within the past twenty-four hours.
Sidney must have noticed the same thing as well, because her brows drew together and she said, “This looks new.”
He nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”
She glanced around the clearing, and he followed her gaze. Now he noted other Ogham letters carved into additional trees in their immediate area. From what he could tell, it looked as if each symbol matched the tree it had been carved into, although he noticed that the letter for “pine” was also used on the sequoia tree.
That made sense. There definitely hadn’t been any sequoia trees in ancient Ireland, so the carver must have used the closest symbol.
Although Sidney hadn’t had the time to memorize the Ogham letters the way Ben had, she seemed to realize there wasn’t anything random about these carvings.
“They seemed to know what they were doing,” she said, although her full mouth still pursed in disapproval, as if she wasn’t very happy about the careful vandalism she’d just seen. “But what’s the point?”
“I have no idea,” Ben said frankly. “A lot of this doesn’t seem to make much sense. Let’s check and see if all the letters are as new as the one on this pine tree.”
“All right.”
By unspoken agreement, they set off in different directions, with him moving to the left and Sidney heading to the right. She’d pulled out her phone and was taking photos of the carvings, and he knew he should do the same thing.
As far as he was able to tell, these new scratches appeared to be the work of a single night. She seemed to have come to the same conclusion, because when they met up on the far side of the grove, her expression had only grown more annoyed.
“Whoever it was, they were a busy beaver last night,” she commented. “I know none of these were here the last time we checked this clearing.”
“No, they weren’t,” Ben agreed. “And although I think they must have been working quickly, they’re still all very precise, almost as if they were using some sort of template rather than freehanding each carving.”
Of course, that begged the question as to why anyone would think doing something like that was a good idea in the first place.
“It feels like some sort of weird ritual,” Sidney said. She paused there and glanced around again, then gave a lift of her slender shoulders. “We’re really far off the trail here, so maybe they thought this was a good place to work where they wouldn’t get caught.”
Possibly. Ben looked around the spot with narrowed eyes, but he didn’t see any other obvious signs that anyone had been here. Except….
“What’s that?” he asked, and pointed at what looked like muddy tire tracks on the far side of the clearing.
At once, Sidney frowned. “I don’t know. No one’s supposed to bring motorized vehicles out here.”
The two of them hurried over to take a closer look at the tracks. Ben didn’t claim to be an expert or anything, but he thought they must have been made by some kind of ATV, since the wheelbase seemed too narrow to have belonged to a standard-size truck or SUV.
